Everyone has really outdone themselves this year on the swag. The day before the show even started I have almost 2 lanyards full. Most importantly though is meeting new people and people that I met briefly last one. Last night consisted of several hours just hanging out in the lobby with everyone just talking and having a great time.

So far for the first day I’ve mainly explored the exhibit hall, but plan on hitting a panel of two and of course the archive party tonight which should be a blast.

For some strange reason the weather decided it was a good day to snow. The airport wasn’t expecting this, so they are short staffed on the crew to de ice the planes. We were just told it’d be an hour before they get to ours, so a little set back and an even more great reason to enjoy the California weather when we land.

Well, the bags are finally packed and I think I’m ready to go. It’s bittersweet that things aren’t going quite as planned for my family to come with, but hopefully they’ll be joining in a couple days.

I’m looking forward to a great Archive Party and room sales night as well as attending a few panels. Most importantly though meeting up with friends and meeting some people that I’ve only known online up to this point.

It’s time to hit the sack for an early AM flight. I’ll try and at least do a post a day here and if I’m feeling overzealous a couple throughout each day.

I’m pleased to announce my involvement in a patch giveaway for Star Wars Celebration Anaheim. Myself and 6 other collectors have sponsored the creation of a puzzle patch, that when combined, form the vintage Darth Vader Carrying case. Each patch piece has one of the vintage Kenner logos that were used throughout the life of the toy line from 1977-1985. My particular piece is The Power of the Force logo. I’ll have 25 of these patch pieces available each day at celebration to give out.

Last celebration, a lot of people went patch crazy, so if that is the case again, you better find me early in the morning. I’ll be easiest to find roaming the exhibitor area or in the location of the collector panels. I could very well be with another one of the sponsors or two which will help knock out a few pieces at once as well. 🙂

Below is a photo of my patch and the full assembled case.

Full information on who to look for to find the other pieces is available here on rebelscum.

There were some rumblings about a young fan at the show who had answered a tough trivia question about the Droids cartoon series that not many would know.

During one of the panels we had this fan sit right in front of us and we got to talking. He literally blew us away with the type of knowledge he had on not only Star Wars, but other 80’s toy lines too.

In fact here you can see him telling Chris about the origin of He-Man.

After that, he wanted to know what I collected, so I told him about the mail aways. He then proceeded to name off several of the vintage mailers asking if I had them. He also shared the story in why the rocket firing feature on Boba Fett was cancelled.

If this is the future of vintage collecting, then I think we have a bright future ahead. I hope he doesn’t mind me posting these videos and if you do please contact me and I’ll gladly remove them.

Now that I feel like I have a bit of time, I’m going to try and play catch up over the next few days. It wouldn’t be right to not talk about the collector room sales that happen late Friday night at every celebration. This is generally a good time to see a lot of things that you’ve only read about online and this time was certainly not a disappointment. There was a great selection of MOC figures, loose figures, bootlegs, Proof Cards, coins, etc.

I knew this would probably be the time that I make my bigger CVI purchase, so I took my time to look around and see what everyone had. As I was looking, I saw Mattias had one of the Power of the Force concept logo pieces. I’d been wanting one of these for awhile and actually passed on one earlier this year because of lack of funds. I found out the price, but decided to have one last look at everything before I knew for sure that is what I wanted. In further looking, a Model Trem Luke Jedi had also caught my eye. That is something else that I wanted, but it did not have any of the accessories and I’ve told myself that when I splurge on one that I’d like it to be complete as the accessories would take forever to hunt down themselves. So in the end, I went back, did a little negotiation on the price, and bought it. Here’s a little bit of info on them for those that care to learn a little more.

I’ll try and do a few more posts once I get back home. I didn’t quite get to the blog posts as planned, but we haven’t had much down time. Before I head home though I thought I’d post a group picture of everything I managed to pick up from Celebration.

C6 day one! Yea… Ummmm… I am spent at the moment. Holy crap it’s been a day. Not sure where to begin or what to say. It’s about 1 am and we are operating on a fine combination of caffeine, whiskey, sleep depravation and exhaustion. I think I’m averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night. 😉

I’ll post more tomorrow but wanted to give you some quick hits. Archive party was incredible! Met some amazing people, my favorite so far would be Johan from Sweden! Lee Bullock is an animal! Had to get that in. 🙂 I had long conversations with Oscar and Luis Villagomez tonight about Lili Ledy and saw some insane factory photos. I learned more about Lili Ledy in 30 minutes from those two than I have in all my time on the boards. The convention is insane! Saw some amazing tattoos and cool stuff at the booths. I haven’t scoped too much stuff yet, just been too busy. Ran around getting all of my “con” stuff out of the way first today. Autographs, prints and general crap. 🙂

I picked up a few things for myself, nothing too wild yet, but fun stuff none the less. BTW, the girls are totally kicking our ass at getting free pins! Holy crap those two are on point with them. And yes, you do need two lanyards. It’s not even funny! The 3PO “golden shower” pin is by far my favorite!!!!!

We’ve also seen some incredibly rare shit! Totally blown away!!! I’ll get some photos of them but there was some amazing things being sold EARLY this morning.

Sorry guys for the lack of quality with this one. I’m not sure I can think straight right now. I’ll try and grab more time tomorrow to get some stuff up. Especially for the room sales.

Today was the first day of CVI. It was fun and we got most of the things like picking up art prints and autographs out of the way first. The only panel I made it to was the Lili Ledy panel which had some amazing photos shown from inside the Ledy factory along with some other great items.

Tonight, was the archive party which was a blast. I manned the Rocket Fett game and we earned some great cash to save the Manatee. The Manatee cardbacks were incredible and Chris did an amazing job. Also, the exclusive coin turned out great and we were given two great surprises in that each sponsor got a couple exclusive cardbacks and a gold version of the coin.

We’ve gone crazy in picking up and distributing our fan made buttons. I’m working on my 2nd lanyard at the moment and there are still a few on my list that I’ve yet to find. Here’s mine from this morning before picking up even more throughout the day.

That’s it for now as it is getting late. Check the Flickr feed for a lot more photos from the party and the day. I’ll try and post more tomorrow.

So we totally rocked Disney yesterday! I think we pulled a 10 hour Disney bender! We would’ve went longer but we were starting to get tired, hungry and needing a break in the a/c for a bit.

The best part about Disney was the fact that, despite our fears, it was pretty empty. We rode every ride we wanted to before noon. The longest line we stood in was for Big Thunder Railroad, and that amounted to roughly 20 minutes. I think my personal favorite was the Buzz Lightyear ride. I don’t know what it’s called but you get to shoot lasers at alien targets. It even records your score! So naturally, upon finding this out, we just HAD to do guys versus girls. 🙂 . Let’s just say we totally demolished the women. I think my score was something like 565,000 and the highest girls score was 56,000. Nothing like sweet victory! Never mind this was a ride clearly aimed for 8 year olds. Or the fact that I was on full in Call of Duty Modern Warfare assault mode. We still won! And thats all that matters. Chalk another victory up in the battle of the sexes boys!

I also would be remiss if I didn’t mention Star Tours. Two words, absolutely incredible! The only drawback to Star Tours is its in a totally different park from Magic Kingdom. So you either need a park hopper pass or a separate park ticket. Bummer. Other than that, the updated ride is amazing. We rode three or four times and had a different ride each time. The best was Hoth and Naboo. And yes, Jar Jar was in Naboo. 🙂 .

I do have to tell you about the worlds biggest Star Wars prick though. At the end of the ride, Disney naturally drops you off at the store (Merchandising!). Well there’s this new attraction at the Star Tours store called Build a Droid. You basically have bins full of astromech parts (legs, feet, body, dome, Mickey ears) and they are in all different colors, types and styles. You then are allowed to build whatever droid combo you want. Well Aimee had stood in line while Shawn, Sarah and I rode Star Tours again so Shawn could build a droid for he and a friend of his back home. When we got there after the ride, Aimee overheard this idiot at the front of the line mention how he was going to build one of everything. That’s right folks, 25 separate droids for his collection. Shawn literally stood in line for 30 minutes behind this ass hat while he argued with the Disney worker over what colors he was missing. Needless to say, I went to management to rectify this situation before Shawn stood there for hours. Idiot. Still mad at that.

Last but not least after dinner we met up with a bunch of collectors that started trickling in. Mattias, Broc, Steve, Josh Blake, Shane, Gallo, Mike Ritter, Elling, Derek, Gus, BradP and a few others. It was a great time and one beer turned into 3 and 10:00 pm turned into 1:30. 🙂 . And thus starts the celebration no sleep marathon. 😉

I’ll upload more pics later. Once Shawn tells me how to upload a giant batch. Today we are going to help set up at the convention center and then off to Harry Potter world! Keep an eye here and on FB for updates and photos.